June 7, 2014 marked the official grand opening of the Walmart AMP in Rogers, Ark. (formerly known as the Arkansas Music Pavilion) with a Walmart event in the morning and country music star and NBC’s “The Voice” coach Blake Shelton in the evening. This outdoor concert venue had some unique challenges for rigging and soft goods. Rose Brand stepped up to the challenge by teaming with McLaren Engineering to design, fabricate, and install Textilene mesh side masking on the stage. Rose Brand also supplied truss, chain hoists, rigging and a split upstage blackout, in addition to installing two 24' high x 13'-6" wide, 5,000 pound LED display tile walls in the wings.

With masking measuring 30' high and 40' wide on each side plus engineered wind load, additional structural steel was required to support the Textilene panels and heavy duty tracks. Triple E Unibeam was employed to travel the 10 custom Textilene panels. Custom braking carriers ensured the panels stay in place once positioned.

With one week of notice to install the video walls, a temporary installation plan was engineered to rig the display frames for the grand opening while the custom rigging hardware was fabricated. The video walls were then dismantled and re-installed for semi-permanent, seasonlong durability. Through collaboration with the venue owners, Rose Brand was able to provide a safe, finished, and workable solution to the challenges the venue posed. These elements will be installed from May-September each season to enhance the acts taking the stage each week.

Here's a response to a customer inquiry that might also be of interest to many others...

Issue: "I am trying to front project on the scrim with a projector that conceals the set behind it with good light control. Please suggest a scrim for me and anything I should be aware of."

Response: Projection onto scrim can be a bit tricky but if you know some of the ins and outs you should be able to avoid the challenges associated with this effect.

All of our (scrim products) can be used for projection but typically theatrical projection is done on the old standby of white sharkstooth scrim. I have also seen projection done on elements of painted black scrim and scenic painted scrims. We have seen many desirable front projection effects and images produced on black scrim that has been sprayed (on the front) with rear-projection Screen Goo, as this makes a great reflective surface for the image on a black substrate. I personally do a lot of outdoor projection onto vinyl mesh like textilene or speaker mesh with great results. The scrim material chosen will depend on your application and the desired seamless area.

The effect of a scrim heavily depends on the control of stray light. It uses contrast to fool the eye into thinking that the material is opaque. Traditional theatrical scenic scrims are typically lit from a very steep angle so that the light that passes through the scrim falls just upstage or in the wings. As long as the space and objects behind it stay dark, you will not see anything through the scrim. If there is front light hitting the scrim straight on, or at a shallow angle, it will illuminate the area and objects behind the scrim. This is true for direct and reflected light from the stage.

When you apply this to projection, things will get a bit more complicated. The ideal setup will depend very heavily on a number of variables; the effect to be achieved, desired quality and purpose of the projection image itself, and the technical capabilities of the venue. All of this is assuming front projection on scrim since rear projection is not advisable and is typically done for effect only.

If your primary concern is projection image quality, you will likely want to put the projector in the house straight on to the scrim. This will produce the best quality of image but is the worst case scenario in terms of making a scrim appear opaque. This is typically how scrim projection is accomplished but it will likely require a blackout immediately upstage of the scrim. This blackout will catch all of the projector overshoot and certainly mask the scenery or stage behind it. Just before the reveal is made through the scrim, the blackout will be flown out or traveled open. If you are looking for a double image, the blackout may not be necessary at all as the background would be dimly lit the entire time.

If you are looking for less quality of image and more effect, the projector(s) can be placed at a sharp angle to the scrim and blended into one image similar to the way your stage lighting would be. This requires equipment capable of this type of image warping and will certainly reduce the overall quality of the projected content. This can be a technically complex setup and will require the appropriate projectors and image processing.

Jacquard fabrication allows a designer to create fabric with intricate custom patterns and imagery at a small required minimum yardage. With Jacquard, your custom artwork is not printed, but digitally woven into the fabric itself. The result is a deeper textured look and feel than ordinary fabric printing can produce. With Jacquard, several color shades can be combined in various fabric densities, resulting in areas ranging from sheer to opaque in a spectrum of tones.

The James Taylor 2014 tour used a Rose Brand® custom Jacquard curtain for a fabulous backdrop. This piece combined a light grey, sheer pattern with a dark grey, opaque pattern that lit beautifully from the front and back. In the photo up top, the grey fabric took on the colors of the lighting used.

Rose Brand is pleased to have worked with Academy Awards® Production Designer, Derek McLane, and Art Directors, Joe Celli and Gloria Lamb, to develop the main curtains and projection screens for Oscar® night.

Two Complementary, Contrasting Curtains

After weeks of collaboration and testing, the team arrived at just the right fabric, production technique and colors to achieve master designer Derek McLane’s creative vision. The 2014 curtain design involved two drapes that both featured Rose Brand white Poly Satin fabric with similar digitally printed design patterns. However, the curtains were printed in contrasting colors and sewn with different levels of fullness.

The main curtain, sewn with 150% fullness, featured a printed silvery background and dark fleur-de-lis pattern. The complementary curtain, which hung above the main drape, adorned the stage arch. The arch curtain, sewn with 75% fullness and printed in contrasting colors, provided a dramatic counterpoint.

Curtain Fabrication

Production of the arch curtain was particularly tricky since its fullness differed from the main curtain, but its printed pattern needed to match the main. Additionally, the top border of the arch curtain had to conform to the curved shape of a pipe located next to it. Since there was no time to re-work any aspect of the project, curtain production needed to be flawless. And it was. Once lit, the curtains produced a stunning effect!

Projection Screens

Rose Brand also produced the projection screens used for parts of the show, including the memorial sequence. Our Black-130 Premium Projection Screen, placed in front of a video wall, produced high contrast, rear projected images, and eliminated the pixilation that would have otherwise been observed (see images below).

How do you quickly & easily create the illusion of a New York City street scene in the middle of a Caribbean Island? Film Director Francis Disla did it for the movie, “Un Lio En Dolares,” filmed in the Dominican Republic.

Disla enlisted the support of Designers Angel Muniz and Sorangel Fersove, as well as Scenic Painter Miguel Hernandez. They knew they could accomplish the task quickly using Vacuform architectural patterns and scenic paint. They chose the Vacuform “Old Brick” pattern, which perfectly captured the look and feel of NYC architecture. Panels were adhered together and then painted the color of NYC apartment building bricks. Each detail was perfectly executed starting from the painting of the brick pattern and ending with the finishing touches of the grocery store and window air conditioners. The scenery looked as though the building had been plucked from the streets of New York City.

Vacuform Scenic Panels are an easy and cost effective way to create great instant scenery. Most commonly used in theaters to depict architectural elements on stage, these panels come in over 42 different styles which can be painted to any color. Rose Brand also offers Vacuform that is pre-primed with Rosco’s Off Broadway Deep Red, Payne’s Grey or Burnt Sienna. Panels are made of .030 gauge material making them lightweight yet durable. This material is both waterproof and flame retardant making it a no-nonsense option for any creation you have in mind.

Vacuform is easy to cut with any utility knife, blade or scissor and can be stapled or glued onto most materials. Panels fit together to form a seamless pattern, which can be painted on using water-based vinyl, oil, lacquer, water-based latex and acrylic paints. You have the ability to replicate materials such as brick, stone, rock, glass, tree bark, shingles and many other decorative elements. Using Vacuform panels is easier, cheaper and less time consuming than using the real materials. The possibilities are endless!

Post: The following is an edited version of our interview with Akiko Nishijima Rotch, Set Designer, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” playing at both the Perseverance Theatre in Juneau and the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts in Anchorage.

Rose Brand: What was your overall design objective for the production?

Rotch: The play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” By Tennessee Williams takes place in the Mississippi Delta area, which has a very hot & sticky environment. The hot weather affects the characters of this play a lot. The biggest challenge I faced as the set designer was how to create a hot & humid atmosphere in a theatre in Alaska.

When I researched the environment of Mississippi, I saw a lot of images of Spanish moss. I felt that those images quickly communicated the feeling of the South, and so Spanish moss became my design motif.

Another important point of the set design was to communicate that characters have no privacy in their home. For example, Mae is always trying to eavesdrop on what Maggie and Brick are saying. Since this is an important aspect of the play, I wanted the set to visually express it. Rose Brand: How did you achieve your design objectives?

Rotch: I started to look for a material that had both translucency (a metaphor for no privacy) and an organic shape (a metaphor for the Spanish moss). Scrim and gauze did not have enough of an organic shape for me. Then I discovered the samples of “Kaos” material among the Rose Brand samples I’ve been receiving since I graduated from NYU in 2007.

Kaos was the exact texture I was looking for. The gaps in the material are uneven and Kaos is also paintable. The uneven gaps allowed us to express the organic shape of Spanish moss. The ease of painting allowed us to create the depth of colors we needed to complete the illusion of the moss.

We used the mossy painted, black, Kaos Medium material to represent the walls of the house in an unrealistic way. As I mentioned before, eavesdropping (and peeping) were important factors to communicate. Being able to see and hear through the walls gave the audience the sense that there was zero privacy in this space.

Rose Brand: How else might you use Kaos for future design efforts?

Rotch: A scrim effect with an organic shaped material is pretty hard to find, so I will experiment with it when I need the texture. I am also curious about Kaos Heavy next time. I would love to see the difference between Medium, which I used, and Heavy. I strongly recommend “Kaos” to create layers of magical space.

Our molding cloth was featured at this year's Burning Man in Black Rock City, NV. The Brusan Stone was used for the Tiki Island Art Project headed by Donald Cassel of the Tiki Island Playa Surfers. It only took three rolls of molding cloth to create a rock skirt around the perimeter of the Tiki Island. The crew started work on the float 4 days prior to the event. Although they didn't have prior experience with the material, everyone quickly became acclimated to how to handle and implement it.

Donald came up with a fantastic method for creating a durable skirt by hanging rebar over the edges of the island. Then, some chicken wire was placed on top to add some structural integrity over the voids between the rebar supports. This aided against periodic gusts of winds that were encountered from being out on The Playa Desert. Before laying the molding cloth overtop the chicken wire, the crew pushed and pulled randomly along the perimeter to create some natural facets/contours for the cloth to lie against. This allowed the molding cloth to obtain a more realistic final shape. The bottoms of the rebars were then fitted with small pieces of wood so that the Brusan Stone skirt could be stapled securely in place. The staples were all that was needed to hold the molding cloth in place all week thanks to its lightweight consistency.

Overall there were multiple benefits for using the Brusan Molding Cloth. The main characteristics of the molding cloth's functionality and easy bendability allowed for accessibility to the main compartments of Tiki Island for easy operation. Also, there were no additional supports needed because the cloth was able to hold it's intended structure. The material was quick and painless for the crew to use and the outcome of the float was realistic and impactful to the Burning Man community. Who would imagine you'd stumble upon a giant 3 story tall 50 ft. wide Tiki Island in the middle of the desert!

Since the Discount Store inventory consists of a lot of one-of-a-kind items that can turn over quickly, Ms. Werle often specifies two or three options for any given item that she needs. This helps her mitigate the impact of a two-week lag between the time she specifies products for purchase and the time they’re actually acquired. Usually at least one of the specified items is still for sale at the end of that two-week period.

Ms. Werle is a huge proponent of sustainability. She much prefers to use an item out of the Discount Store, previously sewn for another engagement, than to order something new. This works for her on two levels, in terms of both reuse and saving money. Often the dollars saved will go towards the purchase of other sustainable items, which can sometimes be more costly upfront than non-sustainable goods.

Designer Ivy Flores created this gorgeous installation with the ominous title, “A Scenic View of the End of the World.” The installation consisted of hanging strips of cotton scrim arranged within a cave-like structure so that viewers could walk into the center of the space and look outwards. Four projectors lit the fabric strips by beaming a panoramic animation outwards from the center of the space. The effect was ethereal.

Cotton scrim is commonly used in theaters, special events and other interior settings for quick economical swags and billows that are light as a feather. Ivy selected this ultra-fine gauzy fabric so that light would pass through the material with minimal effect on the layer behind it. soft and durable qualities made it perfect for an exhibit that users were encouraged to walk through, touch and move.

View more images of designer Ivy Flores’s installation in our portfolio. Watch the video of the experience by clicking the link below.

See projection artist Ross Ashton's FANTASTIC sound & light show, celebrating Dartmouth College's Hopkins Center for the Arts 50th anniversary. The front of the Hopkins Center features several enormous arched windows, each of which was covered with a Rose Brand Tendo fabric projection screen and attached to the steel window frame via Rose Brand ClikMagnets.

Tendo fabric provides for an exceptional projection screen. It's highly reflective, lights evenly and cost effective. It's also stretchable and lightweight, making it much easier to install than traditional vinyl screens. Wrinkles simply stretch away. The lightweight aspect of the fabric enabled installation onto the steel window frames with our convenient ClikMagnet product. If you'd like to read more about how the effects for this event were achieved, the projectors used, etc. please see the article that appears on the Live Design blog.